From their earliest days the University of Rochester and the Rochester Theo-logical Seminary had a symbiotic relationship. They were, as Strong put it,
“twins,” though not “organically and inseparably united.”70 Both schools opened their doors to begin instruction on the same day in November 1850, and in the early years the seminary rented space in the university building.71 According to popular lore, none other than Ralph Waldo Emerson used the university as “an illustration of Yankee enterprise, saying that a landlord in Rochester had a hotel which he thought would rent for more as a university;
so he put in a few books, sent for a coach-load of professors, bought some philosophical apparatus, and, by the time green peas were ripe, had graduated a large class of students.”72 Although the university outpaced the seminary in terms of growth, both schools were generally healthy in the 1850s. In fact, among Baptist schools the University of Rochester was second only to Brown University in terms of enrollment.73
Although Strong had chosen to go elsewhere for his collegiate instruction, he now decided to return to Rochester for his seminary training. Strong’s father had been closely identified with the early history of both the University of Rochester and the Rochester Theological Seminary,74 but that was not the primary impetus behind his decision. Rochester was his hometown, and he thought it would be good to spend more time with his parents while studying for the ministry. They
had, after all, funded his four years of study at Yale. Although Strong was not yet, as he called it, “a firm Baptist,” he could think of no other denomination he could safely join, so by default he concluded it would be best to study at a Bap-tist institution. Most important, Ezekiel Gilman Robinson was then professor of theology at Rochester. Strong viewed Robinson as “the very ideal of a pulpit orator,” and he “felt that [he] could have no instructor in theology or homiletics half as competent as Dr. Robinson.”75 Robinson was a big drawing point for Strong to attend the seminary in Rochester.
In stark contrast to the recitation method practiced at Yale, Robinson en-couraged his students to think critically and to ask questions in class. As Strong noted, “[Robinson] never was so happy as when he stirred up a hot debate.” This change caught Strong completely off guard. Emboldened, however, by the ex-ample of older students he gradually, if somewhat timidly, began to participate in classroom discussion. Strong later considered his experience under Robinson
“the real beginning of [his] intellectual history.”76
Robinson not only challenged Strong by his teaching methods, but he also forced Strong to rethink much of what he had learned at Yale. For example, whereas Noah Porter had given his students the impression that metaphysics was an uninteresting topic, Robinson showed Strong the practical value of such subjects. As Strong later acknowledged, “Under Dr. Robinson all my ideas with regard to metaphysics were changed. I began to see that it alone dealt with re-alities, that, in fact, one could have no firm footing in any other department of knowledge unless he had reached a good metaphysical foundation.” Robinson held to a Kantian doctrine of relativity, which Strong adopted and held for more than twenty-five years.77 Strong later considered some of the actual philosophical ideas he acquired from Robinson to be fetters of a sort, but he credited Robinson with introducing him to the importance of studying philosophy.78
Although in Strong’s opinion Robinson towered above the other faculty members, he also studied under a number of other capable men. Velona Hotch-kiss taught both Hebrew and Greek at the seminary during the 1850s and 1860s.
Whereas Robinson was somewhat of a radical, always questioning older views, Hotchkiss was a very conservative thinker. He held that the world was created in six literal days and believed in a worldwide flood in Noah’s time. For these reasons, among others, Strong thought him “somewhat narrow.”79 At his funeral in 1882, Strong said of Hotchkiss,
He was an ardent lover of the Bible, and a profound believer that its every line and syllable were written by holy men of old as they were moved by the
Holy Ghost. In those days, we who were students wondered whether he did not press too strongly and exclusively the divine aspect of the doctrine of inspiration, and whether he made sufficient allowance for the human moulds into which the molten gold of truth has been poured. . . . He loved the old doctrines, and he held them in their old forms.80
Strong recognized the professor’s scholarly work was driven by his belief in the infallibility and authority of the Scriptures, and for this he deeply respected Hotchkiss. Still, Strong preferred the questioning Robinson to the more staid and stable professor.
George Northrup was, in Strong’s day, professor of ecclesiastical history at the seminary. Like Robinson, he encouraged discussion in the classroom. Conscien-tious and more mystical than the other professors, Northrup had just completed his undergraduate education when he began teaching, and he was still working through a number of theological issues himself. For this reason, he tended to place himself on level ground with his students. As Strong put it, “His very in-experience compelled him to put himself by our sides as a fellow student, and that stimulated us to think for ourselves as we never would have been stimulated by more advanced and dogmatic instruction.”81 Strong appreciated Northrup’s demeanor in the classroom, but Robinson remained the gold standard against which he measured the others.
In addition to his academic work, during his first year at seminary Strong began ministering to a small group of people who met at the Rapids, a small village on the Genesee River three miles south of Rochester. It was a rough area populated largely by canal workers, who spent much of their spare time fighting, drinking, and gambling. The town had three bars, no church, and one run-down schoolhouse. However, the town also had Charlotte Stillson, a woman commit-ted to the spiritual betterment of the community. Throughout the week Still-son would visit folks in the village and encourage them to send their children to Sunday school and to attend services themselves. On Sunday afternoons the neighborhood children were gathered together in the old schoolhouse, where Strong would lead them in singing and speak to them about their souls. Then on Sunday evenings Strong would preach to any adults who came out to hear the young seminary student. Strong described his Sunday schedule during the year and a half he ministered in the Rapids:
On Sundays after I had attended morning service at the First Baptist Church in town and had taught my young women’s Bible class in the
church Sunday School, I walked my three miles, often through rain and mud, to Mrs. Stillson’s house at the Rapids. There I had a cold lunch and soon after went a little farther out on the Chili Road to the tumbledown schoolhouse, where I led singing and superintended the school. We came back to Mrs. Stillson’s for supper. After supper, and often with a lantern to light us along the miry road, we repaired again to the schoolhouse, which was dimly lighted with tallow candles and was crowded to its utmost ca-pacity with an audience of seventy-five. There were fellows outside to throw stones through the windows and fellows inside to create every possible dis-order. Somehow I managed to secure their goodwill, and they made me no positive trouble, though it was hard for the young women, without a guard, to get back unmolested to their homes. But all the while there was one quiet little woman whose influence was gradually subduing the com-munity, and that was Mrs. Stillson.82
During this time in the Rapids, Strong preached simple gospel messages, and he credited this experience with preventing him from becoming caught up with rhetorical display.
One evening, Stillson invited a number of young women to her home for Bible study and prayer. Strong read to them from Isaiah 53 and told them about the atoning work of Christ. That night he believed several of them were gen-uinely converted, and from this experience Strong learned his third lesson in theology: “The atonement of Christ is the effective and the only persuasive to faith. . . . No man had a right to believe in God as a Savior except upon the ground of the sacrificial death of Jesus.”83 Strong found that it was not enough to tell people that God would forgive them. He needed to explain how God could justly save them from their sins.
Strong later reflected that he may have learned more about theology in the Rapids than he ever learned at the seminary. Ministering to people in a diffi-cult area forced him to ask many questions that he never would have encoun-tered in the classroom. Stillson herself also had a significant impact on his thinking. She planted a theological emphasis that may have laid some of the groundwork for his later ethical monism. Strong wrote of Stillson: “I learned from her example the doctrine of a present Christ. And though I had still much to learn about this present Christ . . . now I began to pray to Jesus my elder brother, my human companion, my present friend.”84 By her example, Stillson taught Strong to emphasize the presence of Christ, that is, the imma-nence of deity.
During the spring of his second year at the seminary, Strong developed a bad cold that settled in his lungs.85 After he coughed up blood several times, the family doctor was called, who recommended that Strong end his studies at once and spend an entire year in the open air, else he “might enter the kingdom of heaven” sooner than any of them wished.86 Heeding the doctor’s instructions Strong finished his seminary studies two or three months early and headed to Europe for an extended holiday.87
On May 6, 1859, Strong and a companion named Theodore Bacon set sail from New York bound for Liverpool on the steamer City of Washington.
During his more than fourteen months abroad, Strong engaged in a walking tour, visiting England, Scotland, France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Palestine.88 Strong heard many of Europe’s great preachers, includ-ing Robert Candlish, Horatius Bonar, and Charles Spurgeon, and he saw many of Europe’s architectural landmarks, such as Westminster Abbey, the British House of Commons, the University of Wittenburg, the Acropolis, and St. Pe-ter’s Basilica. After spending three weeks in Rome, Strong later reflected that he “almost longed for a good settled bronchitis which would compel [him] to spend a whole winter in this most instructive and fascinating of all the cities of the world.”89
The travel and change of pace were certainly good for his health, but Strong also benefited from his interaction with a variety of companions. In addition to his original travel mate, Strong spent quite a bit of his time with Americans he met overseas. Chief among them was Elisha Mulford, who was staying in the city of Berlin, where he spent his days learning German, reading G. W. F. Hegel, and smoking his pipe. A graduate of both Yale and Union, Mulford was a disciple of Anglican theologian F. D. Maurice (1805–72) and was quickly becoming a follower of Hegel as well. Later he attempted to popularize the thought of Mau-rice and Hegel in his two books, The Nation and The Republic of God, but at this early stage he was content to spend two or three evenings a week talking with Strong until late into the night. Although these conversations were not Strong’s first introduction to Hegel, they likely included some of the most evangelistic appeals he had ever heard for Hegelian philosophy. Strong spent most of Octo-ber through DecemOcto-ber of 1859 in Berlin.90
During the first half of 1860, Mulford traveled with Strong to Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, and The Hague, and at the end of June they sailed from Liverpool back to Boston aboard the steamship Arabia. By the time they arrived in Boston Harbor, Strong had been away from the United States for one year, two months, and four days, and he calculated the trip to have cost about $2,400. The trip
had been costly and time consuming, but his health had been restored. He had also learned much about foreign language and foreign life, and perhaps most important, he had “found [his] tongue, had acquired ease in conversation, and had learned to mingle with men.” He now had quite a store of memories to draw on for conversation and illustrative purposes, but he also noted that his spiritual condition had somewhat worsened during his time abroad. Ministry no longer seemed an inviting prospect but rather a threatening one.91 He later admitted,
“In my European experience the edge of my Christian feeling became dull. I lost the desire and the love for Christian service, although I learned a great deal of German, and got together a library of German books, which was very useful to me afterward.”92 Though spiritually detrimental, the trip had opened his eyes and broadened his perspective on many issues.